Hi Everyone. This week only, we will be open for plant sales in the nursery on SUNDAY. For the rest of the spring season we will only be open on Saturdays. Nursery is full of new information signs (and plants).
Where: 3295 Compton road in the east Highlands
When: 10am – 2pm
FREE to walk around – Even if you are not buying plants you can come out to look around and walk through the emerging food forest and look at our permaculture homestead. Please park at the bottom of the hill if you are not buying plants.
Food forest. Plants are all coming to life and many have signs so you know what’s what.
New Plants this week: Globe Artichoke, Burbank Plum (Asian), Damson Plum, Santa Rosa Plum (pollinator for Black Amber and Burbank), Pear – Bartlett (classic pollinator for most pears), Pear – 20th Century (Asian pear), Pear – Chojuro (Asian Pear), Pear – Shinseiki (Asian Pear), Strawberry – Quinault, Thornless Blackberry – Black Satin, Thornless Blackberry – Chester, Logan Berry, Rhubarb – Sutton Seedless, Perennial Leek, Asparagus – Millennium (bare root), Black Velvet Gooseberry, Goji Berry – 2′ tall. Plant list with prices. All prices include GST
New plant signs with key info
Reminder of BC Fruit Testers yearly meeting ($10 membership required): Saturday morning on March 19. Gord will be there and speaking on the topic of UNCONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE at 11:30am. BC Fruit Testers AGM
Eco-Hut with 4ft galvalume garden bed.
Other things for sale:
* Galvalume Garden Beds: 4 ft diameter bed is ready to go. $180
* Garlic for eating or planting around roses/raspberries, fruit trees
* OCA tubers – $10 for 20 small tubers. Our favourite edible ground cover around perennials
* Halls Hardy Almond seedling sprouted in our OCA…they must really want to grow together. $10 takes this special combo home.
Our cob patio and sitting area by the cob oven need some work this year and this time we will be installing a roof. Here is a beautiful watercolour done by Janaia in 2013 during their last visit.
Eco-Sense Video of the week: Filmed by Peak Moment TV when Janaia and Robyn visited us a couple years ago. Excellent video on our chicken coop and root cellar. Grow your Food in a Nook and Cranny Garden (part 1) Watch for the jumping chicken.
Local Permaculture in action: Check out this blog post from the UVIC permaculture tour of two local sites: The Eco-Sense Homestead and our friends Tayler and Solara at Wild Edge Farm
Grafting Workshop at Eco-Sense: On Monday March 28th from 1-4pm, Gord is teaching a grafting workshop – so far students are a mix of parents and homeschooled teenagers. Gord will teach how to graft apple trees. Each student takes home two trees they graft. Only 5 spaces left. $49. Students need to bring a sharp pocket knife… and bandages (for Gord of course).
Spring at Eco-Sense
Baird council Initiative of the week: Ann participated in an on line interactive webinar for input into the BC Climate Leadership Plan with many BC legislators and staff participating. This session was for municpal elected officials on Vancouver Island.
Ann submitted various comments and spoke to many elephants in the room. Things like aviation being completely ignored in transportation, Natural Gas extraction (and fugitive methane), embodied energy in construction and loss of sequestered carbon, carbon budgets, no new fossil fuel infrastructure, and provincial policy being out of line with the scientific consensus. At least I was heard. Highlands council will also be discussing offical feedback at our next council meeting. Here is Ann’s full submission for Highlands council to discuss. Link http://highlands.bc.ca/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/2737?fileID=2901.
Baird Council Failure of the month: Gord’s work on CRISP (Capital Region Invasive Species Partnership), lead him to volunteer to track down an educational institution that would be willing to investigate a method to kill invasives using electricity rather than glyphosate. Presently glyphosate is used for stem injection on such items as knotweed. After many attempts over three months with the UVIC Biology department not one email or message was returned. Perhaps there is an engineering student that is interested in taking on this challenge? Someone at UBC or SFU? For more information on the concept, please contact Gord. Here’s a video on just how bad glyphosate (Roundup) is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVolljHmqEs
And finally, what happens when anxiety, depression, and ADHD meet? Funny
The Living Building Challenge
Eco-Sense 